Mrs.Living the New Dream

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

One day you will be an old woman. Inside her you will be hidden, the one who looks at you now in the mirror scrutinizing daily the curves of flesh you think are not smooth enough, or straight enough to be loved. Your eyes may look out onto a plane of the world that has not been changed by time and yet it will be something entirely foreign. Because on that plane, that same revolving earth and water and air, the future won't be a horizon to reach for. There won't be that powerful deception of days to come to make a change or set straight a path gone awry. This old woman, who you will be, the world will see, and won't look on you in the way they do now, either. You as you know yourself to be will be as foreign to the world as the lands you had hoped to roam. Maybe her bones will ache or disease will be hers to own like a trait. Will her fingers, that are your fingers fail to grasp at things, a pen, her mind, a word? She will be glad that the storms of her life have passed, like your mother has said of her own aging. Or if she is still like you are now, will hope for something to burn again in her to make her press onward, upward to relieve the desire. But then again her energies could be spent by noon, on a good day. She will rest and never find fill of it. Could it be that she will choose to look back in her minds eye and having told her story so often and precisely by text decide that she has had her fill after all? Or will the ache of what was not done or could not be fixed spread, acrid in her belly? Will the lungs that feel flattened by heart-break and robust when laughing today, be weak vessels, paper-thin walls, waxing and waning severely just to summon a response to a simple question like, "do you feel alright, honey?" Inside then, will the feverish child in you who demands to know why, stand up and try with all it's might to straighten the bowed back or smooth the folding skin by sheer will alone? She will carry inside of her a world unseen, like always. She will recognize that her life has been much of this. She, having ingested the insides of many books, hoped to have the insides cling to the linings of her insides like nourishment, will know that the language heard in the silence of the mind is rich with the power to keep you in that unseen world. She will be thankful then in that day, tired as she is, that you took the time to carry on the never-ending work of building the mind. Because this old woman, who you will become, and are every day becoming, even though you cannot imagine you will ever reach her, will be there ready and waiting. She won't forget you like you so often forget her. She will remember you as you are now so make sure when she thinks of you she is thankful for what you have built up in the storehouses of the soul, of the heart, regardless of the needless pain you sent her to endure while you had strength. Never mind that she will think, because she will know that youth is always that way; a bright light but a flickering one, and it makes it hard to see with any real clarity the truth of how things will be. Instead, she will, like you always do, look to what has come to pass with the same gentleness you cared for your babies. I only wish I could meet her now, this old woman. I wish we could meet in a small cafe and talk together like old friends who have much to catch up on. The time will come when your steps today will finally but quickly catch up with her slower paced ones. One day you will be an old woman, but today you are just a young woman typing words on your laptop while your daughter watches cartoons, before you pick up your son from school, and run through the frenzy of every day activities that make up this life you so messily lead.